Push for indigenous languages

The new national curriculum will place more emphasis on the importance of learning Aboriginal languages, according to a paper to be released today.

The first draft of a shaping paper to guide the writing of the languages curriculum said all children would be required to study another language for at least 300 hours by the time they reach Year 7 and assumes they would continue in secondary school.

"The opportunity to learn Australian languages is important to all students in Australian schools because they represent a core element of the culture and history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people," it said.

"Through studying these languages, students also learn about the history, culture, land and environment of the country in which they live."

The paper by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority said that despite the extensive research and policy development, provision of languages in schools and uptake by students "remain fragile at all phases of schooling", with just 14.5 per cent of Year 12 students studying a language.

It proposes three stages of curriculum development which would gradually take in 11 languages.

Chinese and Italian would be the first to be included in the new curriculum because they have the largest enrolments. The second stage would include French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

They would be followed by Arabic, Greek and Vietnamese, which are the most commonly spoken languages at home in Australia, apart from English.

The first stage would also include the development of a framework to cover the teaching of all Aboriginal languages

Lead writer Angela Scarino from the University of South Australia, said all decisions about who could learn an Aboriginal language should be made by the community who spoke that language. But learning such languages should not be limited to children with an Aboriginal background.

"I would hope that if the communities of particular languages agree, and non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children wish to study those languages, that the opportunity is there for them to be able to do so," she said.

"I think that it is a really crucial part of the literacy of all children to learn something about the languages of the first people of the country in which they live."